I came across your 1/15 column,
"Job Training Has to Be Reworked," which recommends a government mandate that
private enterprise train all its workers in skills if they train some of them.
I hire a worker to work on Latin America financial analysis, and because he is
weak in his Spanish, I send him to Berlitz and the company pays the tab. Does
Uncle Sam determine that my self-interest requires that I offer Berlitz to my
other employees and give me a "push," as you put it? When I hire an employee
to do filing, clipping and light research, and find after a year that he is
capable of heavy-duty work, but needs computer schooling, am I going to be
required to offer that training to the rest of my staff?

What I mean to
say, Mike, is you should realize how silly you come across when you get warm
and fuzzy about the government doing nice things for your fellow man/woman.
The fact that you found a Ph.D. economist roaming around a Washington think
tank who is willing to be quoted to support your warm and fuzzy ideas is not
his fault, but yours. As a columnist for one of America's premiere news
magazines, you should spend a little more brainpower thinking through things
like this instead of gushing all over your word processor. I'm at least happy
to hear that Treasury Secretary Rubin thinks it is a bonehead idea, as Rubin
actually worked in the real world at Goldman, Sachs, and realizes the horrors
your "little push" by the federal government would create.

The correct
answer to the job retraining problem is to cut or eliminate the capital gains
tax, which will create so many profit opportunities that employers will go
crazy searching for workers and even begin hiring and training handicapped
workers when the labor pool has been totally exhausted. The reason Congress
has been unable to cut the capital gains tax since it was last increased in
1986 is that both parties have been in the grip of the corporate
establishment, which does not want the growth rate increased for precisely the
reason I mention. They do not want the unemployment rate to fall because they
will have to compete for a dwindling labor supply with higher wages. This is
why the capital markets always tremble when there is good news about the
economy. If you really would like to do something for your fellow man, inquire
as to why the economy is not supposed to grow at more than 2 1/2%. If you would ask Karl Marx, he would advise you,
correctly, that the big guys always prefer to maintain a reserve army of
unemployed.